One thing seems certain: In modern democracies, government policy is largely useless in persuading people to have more children. Births are dwindling even in northern European countries that offer parents lavish tax breaks, parental leave, child care and cash handouts.
As smaller families become the new normal, Spain is a case study on how to manage that transition successfully. Success, however, does not come without cost or risk, and Spain is also an example of that.
A plummeting birthrate leaves countries with unpalatable alternatives to sustain economic growth and public finances: more immigration, higher taxes, pared-down public services and pensions, delayed retirement. Or all of the above.
Spain, roughly tied with Italy as the fertility laggards among major Western countries, has opted for more immigrants. In the late 1990s, scarcely 3 percent of residents in Spain were immigrants; today they account for more than 17 percent of population — one of the highest shares in Europe, and more than in the United States.
That has provided workers and juiced growth for the country even as it registered record-low fertility last year — just under 1.2 children born per woman, far below the so-called replacement level of 2.1 required to maintain population equilibrium over time.
The reasons for declining births are well known — not least broader options available to women as their numbers climb in the workforce — and more or less common across developed nations.
In Spain, younger workers earn modest salaries — ordinarily around $20,000 a year — in jobs that are often term-limited. That isn’t enough to pay rent driven higher by gentrification, inflation and Airbnb, so college graduates typically live with their parents, sometimes for years, while embarking on careers. That can postpone many things, including couple formation and babies.
While visiting Madrid, I spotted babies and toddlers in restaurants, along broad boulevards and in El Retiro, the city’s handsomest park. But the children are often in carriages or strollers pushed by middle-aged moms or gray-haired dads; older siblings were seldom in evidence.
For some young Spaniards and others in Europe, parenthood just isn’t considered very cool — certainly less so than traveling, hanging with friends and pursuing careers. About a quarter of Spanish women born in the mid-1970s have no children; among younger women that number is soaring — even in the United States, where the fertility rate is higher.
When I interviewed a group of graduate students at Carlos III University in Madrid, none was remotely interested in becoming a parent in the foreseeable future.
“My mom had me when she was 39, so I’ve never worried about this,” said Muria Errasti, 23, a master’s candidate in data science. “I’d rather enjoy life and travel while I’m young.”
Spanish demographers say the birth dearth is compounded by the cost of raising children, roughly $700 a month in Spain, and the time suck of helicopter parenting. For some contemplating having children, pervasive anxiety intensifies the reluctance: Why bring babies into a world beset in recent years with recession, pandemic, war and climate change?
Birthrates in France, England, Norway, Hungary and Poland are also tanking. In Finland, fertility fell to a 246-year low. Rueful Italians say theirs is a “country of empty cribs.” That prompted Pope Francis to condemn what he called “selfishness” leading young people to prefer pets to babies. In France, President Emmanuel Macron, alarmed by his country’s tumbling birthrate, declared “demographic rearmament.”
In Spain, there’s little catastrophic rhetoric but plenty of private pain. Demographers cite polls showing people want more babies than they’re having. Spanish fertility clinics do a booming business with women in their late 30s and 40s who waited to get pregnant only to encounter the biological fact that time is against them.
At Ginefiv, a group of sleek fertility clinics in Madrid, staff psychologists help patients with long-term treatments whose emotional toll is exceeded only by cancer therapy, said Joaquín Llácer, the medical director. “Nobody is worried about fertility,” he told me, “because nobody is aware of the suffering of fertility patients.”
Yet surging immigration has bolstered Spain’s robust economic growth, which is outstripping most of Europe’s. Spanish law has smoothed the way for migrants, especially Latin Americans sharing language and cultural affinity with Spain. They gain easy access to working legally and, after just two years, eligibility for citizenship.
The Spanish model may be hard to replicate elsewhere in Europe, where radical-right, anti-immigrant parties are ascendant. Spain’s own migrant-bashing party, known as Vox, faded in last year’s elections after a flash of success five years ago.
Risks remain. Spain probably can’t raise fertility rates, but the jury is out on whether it might be able to at least stabilize them with smarter policies. Promoting more stable jobs for young workers could help, along with boosting Spain’s spending on families with children, which, as a percentage of economic output, is half the outlay in many northern European nations.
The baby bust is here to stay. Spain is showing how to manage it.
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